


Letters and Numbers

by indoissetep



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars: Before the Awakening - Greg Rucka
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Violence and Death, poe's only there for moral support, some language, there are a couple of ships there if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 08:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8790511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indoissetep/pseuds/indoissetep
Summary: A prisoner is brought to the Resistance's base and demands to speak directly to Finn.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a sucker for the boys from Before the Awakening and their relationship with Finn, so this happened.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Poe asked carefully. His hand was tight and warm around Finn’s arm.

“I don’t know, but I know I have to do it.”

“You don’t _have_ to talk to him, Finn. You don’t owe him anything.”

“Yeah, I do. This much, at least. He’s...” for a moment, Finn didn’t know how to finish the thought, “He’s all that’s left, Poe.”

 

* * *

 

 

Like most of their base, the Resistance’s holding block seemed to have been carved straight out of the landscape. D’Qar’s natural vegetation covered the building on the outside and, on the inside, twisting roots clung to the walls of the cells and corridors.

_Besh-Squad brought in a few prisoners from their raid on the North side of the compound,_ General Organa had told him after he had finished the report for his own Aurek-Squad . _One of them has been asking for you non-stop._

The sound of their footsteps bounced off the stones and echoed around, Finn’s leading the way and Poe’s a few steps behind, a reassuring presence at his back.

After passing a number of empty cells, and a few containing unfamiliar and unfriendly faces, they finally reached the last cell in the corridor.

Finn stopped to take in the sight of the man sitting inside.

The prisoner faced the wall opposite his narrow bunk, knees drawn up to his chehst and forearms resting relaxedly on them. He was clad in simple black fatigues, exactly the same as the ones Finn had worn not long ago.

“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” said the man, never glancing away from his cell’s wall, “They wouldn’t even tell me if you were really here.”

_He still knows me by the sound of my footsteps._

“Well, I’m here,” said Finn.

Only then did the man’s eyes leave the wall to look straight into Finn’s. The energy field that served as his cell’s door offered no buffer against the intensity in his dark eyes.

“Long time no see, 2187.”

Finn studied the man’s face, one that he knew better than his own. The lines of his jaw and cheekbones were sharp, the space between them marred on one side by a scar, lighter than the rest of his dark brown skin. His hair was longer, fuller than Finn could ever remember seeing it, too many months away from a regulation cut. His mouth was tense and downturned as ever.

Zeroes had always been the serious one of the group.

Finn felt the corners of his own mouth turning down at the sound of his old designation. The change did not go unnoticed by the other man.

“Sorry, I forgot. It’s Finn now, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

He wondered for a moment how Zeroes knew that name. If he had heard it from the First Order itself, or outside it. He wondered if there were holos of him being shown, as they spoke, to stormtroopers and cadets across the Galaxy. Propaganda pieces painting him as a traitor, a murderer, a monster.

_The defector, FN-2187, now going by the alias FINN._

“And who is...?” Zeroes jerked his head almost imperceptibly towards Poe.

Finn had almost forgotten he was there.

“I’m Poe. Poe Dameron. It’s good to meet you, Zeroes.”

“Right, the pilot from Jakku. I remember. So _this_ is the reason you left?” he stared at Finn the whole time, face contorted and voice dripping with disgust.

Finn could feel Poe bristling behind him, but the pilot said nothing.

“No,” Finn stepped closer to the cell door, “I left because I was sick of being a tool for the First Order. Because I refused to kill for them.”

“That’s what we’d been trained our whole lives to do. You knew that.”

Finn shook his head.

“They told us we were training to be soldiers. To fight the enemies of peace and order. To protect the Galaxy. They never told us we were training to murder innocents.”

Zeroes ran a palm over his forehead, dug his fingers into his too-long hair. “You’ve always been too soft, Eight-seven. That was always your problem.” Then, dropping his hand abruptly and turning a glare on Finn, “Those _innocents_ on Jakku were firing right back at us. They could have killed us. They killed _Slip_!”

Finn tried to draw in a slow breath through his nose, but his lungs refused to expand enough to take it all in.

“Don’t.”

“What’s the problem? You don’t wanna talk about him?” he sneered, but when he continued his voice was almost kind, “I know you cared about Slip more than you ever cared about any of us. Is that why you finally snapped that night?”

“In part, I think. But it wasn’t just that. I’d already made up my mind before Jakku.” Then, in response to Zeroes’s inquiring look, “After Pressylla.”

“Right.”

Silence stretched between them, long and heavy. Finn didn’t know how to continue the conversation. So Zeroes did it for him.

“I saw you on Takodana, you know. I saw you go up against Nines. With a fucking lightsaber,” he shook his head incredulously, “He’s dead. Your friend’s blast ripped a hole straight through his armor.”

Finn had know that all along. There was no way Nines could have survived Han’s shot. But knowing was one thing, and actually hearing it, from Zeroes’s mouth no less, was another. It was like a sick chill had sipped right into his bones, making his whole body shiver. He had to close his hands into fists to stop them from trembling.

“Well, I guess that’s what you were going for,” Zeroes went on, “Your buddy just saved you the trouble of finishing Nines off yourself.”

Suddenly, it was heat not cold coursing through Finn’s body and making him dig his nails into his palms.

“Fuck you, Zeroes. Fuck you!” he wanted to barge into the cell and punch Zeroes’s lights out. It was a good thing he didn’t have the codes to deactivate the door. “Do you think I wanted to fight him? Or you? Do you think I wanted to see any of you get hurt?!”

Finn was dangerously close to the energy field, could feel it buzzing close to his skin. He was faintly aware of Poe holding him by the arm, saying something like “hey, hey, easy!”, but Finn wasn’t listening. And neither was Zeroes.

 “You should’ve thought about that before you ran off to join our enemies. Before you betrayed us!”

Zeroes’s voice rang inside the stone passage. Inside Finn’s mind, the word _TRAITOR,_ rang in a different but equally familiar voice.

Zeroes was on his feet now, too, standing inches away from him, and Finn found himself having to look up. Zeroes had always been the tallest of them, ever since they were kids. Finn had fostered some hope of overtaking him once they reached puberty, but that had never happened.

“I knew you had doubts,” Zeroes’s voice was much quieter now, but all of the previous anger was still there, “I knew you’d stopped believing in the Order’s ideals. But I never thought you’d turn your back on _us_. You, always talking about how we were a team, how we had to stick together and look out for each other. Turns out that you were full of shit all along. You bailed on us the first chance you got.”

“You’re right. I shouldn’t have left you behind.”

Zeroes took a step back, a crease forming between his eyebrows.

Finn drew a datapad from his jacket’s pocket and glanced down at it, at a picture of Zeroes and at the identification – Prisoner: Stormtrooper FN-2000 – underneath it.

“General Organa allowed me to read the report on your capture. It says here that it only took one person to bring you in. That you offered no resistance.”

Finn looked up at Zeroes, but saw that he had turned back to staring at the cell wall.

“The guy snuck up on me. Had a blaster to my head before I knew it,” he shrugged.

Finn flicked the datapad off and shoved it back into his pocket before speaking.

“Bantha shit. Nobody sneaks up on you. I spent twenty standard years trying. So did Nines and Slip. We made bets.”

A new and rare sound echoed inside the stone passage. It took Finn by surprise. Took him back to his childhood years – if they could be called that.

Zeroes was laughing.

“I know. I know you did,” said Zeroes, his voice still tinged with laughter.

 “You wanted to come here.”

 “Yeah, well...” Zeroes turned to look at the other former stormtrooper, “There was nothing left for me in the First Order.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to tumblr. Find me there @capcassianandor


End file.
